Skip to main content

The Bucket List



Only a man with too much time on his hands and maybe too little hope in his heart will ponder about his bucket list when in the prime of his life. A bucket list, for those who do not know, is a list of things that you want to do before you die. It originated from its more well known cousin 'to kick the bucket'.

Me, I thought about it when I had neither much time in my hands nor any lack of hope in my heart. The thought was by all means intentional because what one wants to do before one dies is perhaps what one really wants to do in life, but never thought possible once life started 'doing' him. Though the greatest wonder about our world, despite all the efforts of every mathematician and scientist to model every possible event and outcome, is that one can never really predict what is going to happen tomorrow. It is this unpredictability and how we dealt with it that has both made men and broken others.

And so when my friends asked me about what was in my bucket list, I told them I wanted to travel, see the world. Simple reason. The world is a really beautiful place that it would be a pity if one were to die without daring to venture out and see and feel for himself the beauty one had been missing out.

Though now that some of the alcohol is out of my head and some reason has sauntered in again, I am not so sure if my dying moments is one that should be spent in a place I barely know or one where I began my life in.

For me, that would be India. It is one place I loathe to go back now because it is not the same place I left more than 10 years ago. The people are different, the buildings are different, it is anything but an saddening vision of a country where technology, westernisation and money are rapidly displacing culture, community and family as the foundations of the country.

Though, as any man grows old, the call of the land he was born on will always be too hard to resist. Maybe it is nostalgia, maybe it is the numerous books and films I have watched about Indian men, who toil away on foreign lands to eventually return to their homeland. Whatever the reason, I guess I will skip all that travelling and just return home. The people may be different, the buildings may be different but it is only there that I can relive the dreams, hopes and memories when I first stepped into this world. And that would be certainly worth reliving before one's final moments.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Fool's Pride

I was rolling up the sleeve of my uniform, preparing for a call up that might never come, when I realised that somehow I was overcome by a strange sense of pride, a pride that wanted the length of my sleeve to be precise as I have always pictured in my mind. Any longer, I would look shabby. Any shorter, I would look amateur. Then I donned the green, tightened the velcro around my waist and looked in the mirror. It was just like before and the memories started flooding me. I never really liked it when I donned it for 2 years in a row. Then I was in a place where I detested the culture, the harsh discipline, the unreasonable demands and the lack of purpose in everything I did. But now that it was over, when I look back, it was perhaps the greatest time of my life. The suffering, the digging, the starving, the cold, the banter, the rowdiness, the jungle, the marches,the mountains, the food, the stories, the friendships, it was all worth the 2 years. A girl friend of mine once asked...
2 comments
Read more

Marriage and All That : Part 2

"How about I get married?" "Are you serious?" "Yea" "No really. If you are serious, I can start looking for one" "Uhh....Nah. I was just kidding" After a while, she stopped asking me if I were serious. Instead, she would laugh it off every time I suggested it, which was the original intention of my question. For me it was just comic relief, this idea of marriage that parents back in India would pester their children with once they reached just about where I was right now; young, working with a steady income and of totally no use at home. Though when she did ask me if I was serious, I do remember feeling a palpitation in my heart, the kind one gets when having to make a yuge decision (#trump2016 #makeamericagreatagain), knowing very well that she, along with an army of aunts, waited for my green light to start searching for a bride for the most promising of their nephews. A NRI (non residential Indian used to refer to the ...
2 comments
Read more

6:15 on Hardy Toll

My left hand lies curled in a tight fist between my thighs, while the right presses stiffly against the coarse leather of the steering wheel, bearing the burden of the task. Though to call it a burden would be an overstatement of an activity that once gave me a sleepless 23 hour flight but now bordered on mindlessness. Now, being on the that road, at that time, when even the sun was too lazy to rise from its sleep, was second nature to me. Thoughts raced through my mind, thoughts about the destination I was headed to. The bulk of them recollected old frustrations and the remainder imagined new ones. My left fist curl tighter as I sped ahead in the air conditioned cocoon. I try to keep to the right of the two lanes as I drove, quasi subconsciously,  at 60 miles per hour on a a 65 mile per hour lane, which still had an additional legally tolerable 10 mile per hour buffer. Lost in my unending imaginings, I stay at that speed until an even slower traveler in front jerk me i...
1 comment
Read more